Every year around February we organize the Metal Storm Awards, where we nominate the best albums from the previous year and let our users vote for them. The categories include almost every metal sub-genre, Best Cover Song, Best Debut Album, Best DVD, Best Video, Biggest Letdown, Biggest Surprise and the very special Best Drama, which we award to the most pathetic metal-related event of the year.

Friends, Romans, countrymen: pencils down. You came, you saw, you voted, and now the die is cast - behold them, the conquerors of the [ed: wait, what? We're still doing the Star Wars theme? Hang on.] Gands, Devaronians, Calamarians: turn off your datapads. Another edition of the Metal Storm Awards has come and gone, like only so many nomadic Alwari. Observe the results; have your prophecies been fulfilled?

While 2014's Awards shook up the competition with some fresh and unexpected victors, in the case of 2015, like any good Death Star, you could sense the results from lightyears away - as if millions of voices suddenly cried out and immediately voted only for the bands they recognized. In many of these categories, the winner was the only nominee to break a hundred votes, and then often by a margin more expansive than the Rakatan Infinite Empire. The only category with a reasonably close competition was Power, in which Blind Guardian and Symphony X traded places more times than Darth Vader has had to replace his right hand; otherwise, nobody managed to bring balance to the votes. Enslaved, Paradise Lost, Ghost, Ensiferum, Lamb Of God - just about every field got swept. It might be about time to present Amorphis with a Lifetime Achievement Award and excuse them from future competitions.

Nightwish ran through the Symphonic category like a fleet of World Devastators, snatching victory from the jaws of... well, completely foreseeable victory, as they pulled away with more than ten times as many votes as the runner-up. Interestingly, Nightwish also comfortably secured the dubious distinction of Biggest Letdown, crushing other reputable acts like Iron Maiden, Slayer, and The Avengers II: Age of Ultron (whose nomination we're pretty sure was Joss Whedon's first-ever on this or any metal site). While two of our users seem to have declared ar'krai against that film, another took it upon themselves to defend Robert Downey, Jr.'s honor by nominating him for Best Power Metal Album.

Biggest Surprise went to Swallow The Sun and their three-disc, multi-genre epic Songs From The North I, II & III (and not to Michael Kiske on account of "how much he looks like a potato now"). Metal Storm itself received four separate nominations for Biggest Drama. It means a lot to us, guys, but we have to hand it to Immortal - not since the Max Rebo Band nearly became sarlacc food has a band died such an undignified death, only to be resurrected after some faffing about technicalities. The Blizzard Beasts even topped Wintersun (nominated again; might be Time II give up on that one, folks). On a lighter note, we at Metal Storm Towers heeded your requests, and this year we reintroduced the Best Album Artwork category, which generated a lot of attention.

Win or lose, we maintain our philosophy that the Metal Storm Awards are about the music, and not about who gets our lovely, prestigious trophies. If you're feeling disenfranchised about the results (which were more thoroughly predictable than The Force Awakens), just remember that the nominees are all still down there, still available to be uncovered by potential fans. But enough talk; go check out the results!